Collaboration is hard, messy, and undervalued - but worth it

There I said it. Like the fact that good content is hard work to create another undervalued part of the digital strategy is collaboration.

Gerry McGovern who publishes awesome articles every week on his New Thinking site covered this issue well. In fact I think Gerry probably generates the most head nods of agreement with his views than any other site I visit.

He also makes good use of this piece from the Harvard Business Review
When senior managers won’t collaborate | HBR | Heidi K Gardner | March 2015

“...the financial benefits of multidisciplinary collaboration are unambiguous. Simply put, the more disciplines that are involved in a client engagement, the greater the annual average revenue the client generates.”

“Cross-disciplinary collaboration also helps insulate professionals from economic downturns.”

“...it’s no secret that the organizational structure, compensation systems, and cultures in many, if not most, professional services firms favor individual contributors rather than team players.”

It seems apparent from this research that we need to provide the right organisational culture to reward collaboration.

As Gerry states “Greater complexity demands more collaboration equals more value”
More collaboration equals more value | New Thinking | Gerry McGovern | March 2015